Now this
looks promising in ways that the label’s rote recent compilation of previously
released tracks did not: to celebrate the powerhouse Canadian indie’s 10th
anniversary, they had their artists cross-pollinate for new recordings. But it’s
hard to tell how Broken Social Scene collaborates with Years, which is the solo
project for its own guitarist Ohad Benchetrit. And it’s hard to tell
mumblers Hayden and Jason Collett apart on their track together. It’s even
harder to tell what exactly is happening when Apostle of Hustle and Zeus
attempt to cover New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle”—bizarre doesn’t begin to
describe the incoherent mess.

The bright
light here is the Hidden Cameras and Snowblink reinventing Duran Duran’s “The
Chauffeur,” giving the song not only far superior vocals than it ever did (not
that hard), but a haunting, magical arrangement. Feist joins Timber Timbre for
a ghostly duet that, unlike most of the other original songs here, sounds like
it was actually written and rehearsed before recording. Dan Mangan and Amy
Millan give the Johnny Mathis chestnut “Chances Are” a late-night, synth-laden
and lethargic makeover that would be a lot more appealing if it didn’t conclude
such a collection of missed opportunities. (May 30)

A garage
rocker from San Francisco with a taste for psychedelia and a B.F.A. degree in
music, Mikal Cronin is much more than another shaggy-haired guy with a
distortion pedal, power-pop melodies and a love of folk-rock harmonies—though
he’s all that too, like a next-generation J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. Cronin is a
much better songwriter than most of his contemporaries—including Kurt Vile and
Ty Segall, two peers he’s often compared to (he also plays in Segall’s
band)—and switches easily from wistful country rock to summer anthems to
acoustic ballads to heavy shredding, and leaves room for the occasional violin
solo. Though the recording is raw and live, there’s nothing remotely sloppy
about this; Cronin proves to be a master craftsman in every aspect. Fans of B.C.’s
Yukon Blonde should pay close attention, as should everyone else looking for
the great guitar rock album of summer 2013. (May 16)

Download: “See
It My Way,” “Shout It Out,” “Peace of Mind”

Daft Punk -
Random Access Memories (Sony)

Who makes
albums with a million-dollar budget anymore? Furthermore, how many electronic
acts make albums with a million-dollar budget anymore? Daft Punk have done
exactly that, and it sounds like, well, a million bucks. It’s the Rumours for
the rave generation.

Their first
album in eight years is not for the Skrillex tweakers they spawned: this is by
two guys pushing 40, with two kids apiece, who finally moved their laptops out
of their bedrooms and entered a real studio with musicians who made some of
their favourite records. Their French countrymen Phoenix may have bought the
sound console that Michael Jackson’s Thriller was recorded on, but Daft Punk
hired Jackson’s actual rhythm section (bassist Nathan East, drummer John JR
Robinson, guitarist Paul Jackson, Jr.) to get a far superior sound. Other
studio all-stars on hand include drummer Omar Hakim (Sting, Dire Straits),
Chic’s Nile Rogers and Canadian pianist Chilly Gonzales (Feist).

And then
Giorgio Moroder shows up. Moroder, who single-handedly brought the synthesizer
to disco, doesn’t even play an instrument here: his adoring disciples give him
two virtually unaccompanied minutes of the man speaking about his entry into
music, before the track becomes a Moog disco song with a jazz-fusion electric
piano solo, followed by an orchestral breakdown, then a bass and turntable
showdown, and culminates in a scorching harmonized guitar solo punctuated by
laser sounds. It’s nine minutes long. Who needs the rest of the album? And yet.

Pharrell
Williams (N.E.R.D.), Julian Casablancas (the Strokes) and Animal Collective’s
Panda Bear lend vocals. Most stunning, however, is the appearance of Paul
Williams, the ’70s songwriter (“The Rainbow Connection”), actor (Phantom of the
Paradise) and perpetual TV guest (The Love Boat). He sings the album’s other
eight-minute-plus epic, which opens the sound of him being strangled inside a
machine, intoning, “Touch, I remember touch … I need something more in my
mind.” It closes with a children’s choir singing “You’ve given me too much to
feel / you’ve almost convinced me I’m real.”

Tangibility
is what sets Random Access Memories apart from everything else in Daft Punk’s
ice-cold catalogue—and indeed from much electronic music today. That might be
the most retro element of all here. There’s a live drummer on every song—even
pedal steel on more than half of them. There are several sad-robot ballads,
some of which miraculously transcend inherent cheese to be emotionally
affecting.

“Let the
music of your life give life back to music,” they sing (through Vocoders) on
the opening track, a mission statement for their new direction. (May 30)

Download: “Instant
Crush,” “Giorgio by Moroder,” “Doin’ It Right”

Agnetha Faltskog – A (Universal)

The same
week that an ABBA museum is opening in Stockholm, one of the As in ABBA
releases her fifth solo album—only her second one in 25 years (its predecessor
came out in 2004). It’s impossible to fault Faltskog for appealing to her own
demographic, but it seems impossible that anyone who is not a 63-year-old Swede
would enjoy a song called “Back On Your Radio,” which inexplicably finds the
legendary singer using AutoTune and features a peppy melody that would
embarrass Doris Day. Yes, this is an ABBA alumnus we’re talking about here, but
even ABBA was never this sappy—and that’s saying something. (May 23)

Download: “I’m
the One Who Loves You Now,” “I Should Have Followed You Home” (feat. Gary
Barlow), “I Keep Them On the Floor Beside My Bed”

Flaming Lips
– The Terror (Warner Brothers)

Those shiny,
happy people are gone. Singer Wayne Coyne split up with his wife of 25 years.
Steven Drozd had a brief drug relapse after 10 years of being clean. And after
releasing a variety of strange projects—including an underrated all-star album
with Nick Cave, Jim James, Erykah Badu and Ke$ha—the Flaming Lips sound like
they’re wiping their slate of everything except their synthesizer banks. Drozd
has said that after 20 years with the band, he didn’t feel like he could do
anything more with chords and melodies. And so The Terror is largely an
extended sound art piece, full of the psychedelic keyboards that have been
central to their sound in the last 15 years, and Coyne moving from his role as
carnival barker to more of a lonely astronaut singing unintelligibly to the cosmos.
Considering the band’s prolific output, fairweather fans have every right to
question whether this is just more Flaming Lips fuckery—like, say the
soundtrack to Christmas on Mars—or whether it belongs alongside the band’s
best-loved work. It’s clearly the latter, although anyone expecting peppy pop
songs is best advised to steer clear. (May 2)

Download: “Be
Free, A Way”; “Try to Explain”; “The Terror”

Folly and
the Hunter – Tragic Care (Outside)

What if
Sufjan Stevens recorded with Fleet Foxes in Montreal? Wonder no more. Banjos,
pianos, minimal percussion, pump organ and glorious harmonies dominate in this
earnest anglo trio, who write quiet anthems that show a touch of Arcade Fire on
Quaaludes. Though lovely, the album gets weary over the course of its 43
minutes; maybe some hard touring will put some spring in their step. (May 9)

Download: “Ghost,”
“Moth in the Porch Light,” “Vultures”

The Good
Family – The Good Family Album (Latent)

Dallas and
Travis Good of the Sadies grew up in a musical family: their father and uncle
were ’70s country giants the Good Brothers, a fact that rarely gets mentioned
now that the Sadies have spent 15 years as Canada’s most beloved roots band and
sidemen to the stars (everyone from Neko Case to Neil Young). They’ve often
invited their parents, aunt and uncle on stage with them, and occasionally on a
song or two in the studio, but this is the first time the whole family sat down
to make a record. Sadly, it doesn’t live up to a generation of expectation; instead,
it sounds like what perhaps is all it has to be: eavesdropping on an insanely
talented family trade songs and licks. Which is what you can do when the Good
Family play the Starlight Lounge in Waterloo tonight, May 30. (May 30)

Download: “Taller
Than the Pines,” “Outside of Saskatoon,” “Paradise”

Jim Guthrie
– Takes Time (Static Clang)

The year was
2003: a Montreal band called Arcade Fire put out their first EP. The label Arts
and Crafts was launched to promote Broken Social Scene and its various
offshoots. And yet at the same time a Guelph-Toronto label called Three Gut was
wrapping up a flawless 10-album opening salvo that concluded with the third
album by the label’s inspiration, Guelph’s Jim Guthrie. Titled Now More Than
Ever, it was the sound of a bedroom recording genius realizing his full
potential as a popsmith and lush arranger, the melancholy sound of a nascent
musical scene growing up, and the sound of Montreal and Toronto’s music scenes
falling in love with each other and blowing up worldwide. It featured Owen
Pallett’s string arrangements; that directly led to Pallett’s gig on Arcade
Fire’s Funeral album (and subsequent tour). It was nominated for a Juno in a
category alongside Arcade Fire, Feist and Stars. Guthrie then found work writing
jingles and acclaimed soundtracks for films and videogames. He put out one
folk-pop album where he shared the spotlight with Nick Thorburn of Unicorns and
Islands, called Human Highway, but fans had reason to wonder if Now More Than
Ever was a summation and conclusion rather than a launching pad.

Ten years
later, Guthrie has suddenly re-emerged with an album that recalls the
innocence, the uncertainty and the longing of 2003 and raises the bar with
maturity, wisdom and optimism: like an old friend who suddenly shows up on your
doorstep, reminds you of all your past glories together, and in so many words
tells you to buck up and prepare for all the greatness ahead. “Ran out of time
making time machines,” he sings: best not to dwell on the past or worry about
the future, but make the best of today.

Ten years in
the studio tailoring his music for other people’s demands has only deepened
Guthrie’s own production aesthetic. Rich California harmonies, synths bleeding
into strings and horns, and surprisingly funky drumming underneath folkie indie
rock songs all coalesce with a light psychedelic touch and filtered through a
man who “eats, sleeps melody.”

His
supporting players are fantastic: Pallett returns to arrange the stirring “Wish
I Were You”; Randy Lee of the Bicycles handles most of the violin work; Jordan
Howard (The Acorn, Tusks) pulls off a ripping guitar solo on “Don’t Be Torn”;
the rhythm section of drummer Evan Clarke and bassist Simon Osborne are
exemplary throughout. Guthrie mixes and matches influences effortlessly
throughout: “The Rest is Yet to Come” matches a Bonham beat with doo-wop
vocals, Edge-like textural electric guitars, R&B-style acoustic guitars,
orchestral bells and strings that shift from soaring to disco stabs, all
underneath Guthrie’s sing-song melody.

Most
importantly, the songs are fantastic. Just as one masterpiece ends, another
takes its place. Only an album that took five years to make could hope to
achieve the perfection Guthrie attains here. The denouement is a folkie
acoustic cover of Nina Simone’s “Turn Me On”; it’s lovely enough, but
considering the tour de force Guthrie has just dropped in our lap, it’s little
more than exit music while leaving the theatre. If a Nina Simone track is your
throwaway number, you know you’ve got something good going on. (May 9)

Download: “Don’t
Be Torn,” “The Rest is Yet to Come,” “Wish I Were You”

Headstones –
Love + Fury (FrostByte/Universal)

Dear dudes.
Hugh here. It’s 2012 and look, I’m itchy. Flashpoint is about to wrap up. It
was a blast. And, honestly, a sweet paycheque. But let’s be fucking frank here.
Even an action-packed TV show involves standing around for inordinate periods
of time in a monkey suit waiting for action to actually begin. I did that for
five years. People kissed my ass. Now I’m sitting around waiting for voice-over
work for insurance company ads. So like I said, I’m itchy. Twitchy, even. I
miss you fuckers. Those reunion gigs were a good time. Got the blood pumping.
Got the juices flowing.

So let’s
bottle that shit. Let’s kick over some chairs. It’s been 20 years since the
first album. It’s been 10 since we called it quits. Let’s show these whiny,
pampered emo kids what’s the what. I’ve got some tunes. I’ve got some shit to
get off my chest. I’m old. I’m cranky. But I’m ready to rumble and I can still
kick the ass of punks half my age.

And you know
what? I ain’t got time to waste. This will be 10 songs, all under four minutes
long, recorded as live as possible. No studio tricks. No artistic maturity,
whatever that is. No grunged-to-death Nickelback bullshit. If radio doesn’t
want it, fuck ’em. I want those guitar solos to be breathless and last no more
than eight bars. We can drop the tempo here and there, but Jesus Christ, no fucking
ballads. (Note: I may break that rule once. And the four-minute one. So that
will make 11 tracks. Sue me.) And—now hear me out—I want to cover ABBA’s “SOS,”
because that song makes me fucking weep, and we’re going to do it like the
Ramones on amphetamine. Don’t worry, though, my new songs are as good or
better, so nobody’s going to think it’s a cheap novelty trick to get on the
radio.

Yeah, this
might be like a fool’s game and we’ll still end up playing shitholes called
Cowboy Ranch and Toronto critics will think we’re nothing more than a
soundtrack to a bar fight. But you know what? We’ve been written off before. We
can do this. I’m ready. I’m fucking ready. I’m hungry. Are you? Fuck yeah.

Love, Hugh. (May 23)

Download: “Bin
This Way For Years,” “Change My Ways,” “Far Away From Here”

Iggy and the
Stooges - Ready To Die (Fat Possum)

Iggy Pop,
who just turned 66, still fronts the loud, obnoxious punk band he founded 45
years ago, and here he reunites with guitarist James Williamson, 40 years after
they last played together on the Raw Power album. (Original guitarist Ron
Asheton had been playing with the reformed Stooges for the past 10 years, until
his death in 2009). Williamson, who was a Silicon Valley executive for most of
his post-Stooges life, sounds fantastic. Of course, Pop sounds timeless—he has
for decades now.

Unlike, say,
the Rolling Stones, Iggy and the Stooges still sound like they have the
potential to be a dangerous, exciting band. Except that they’re not. Playing
old classics is one thing; writing new ones is an entirely different challenge.
The only half-decent rockers find Pop drooling over double-Ds and singing about
how “nipples come and nipples go.” Titling your new album Ready to Die helps
the jokes write themselves, but it’s downright strange when the album ends with
a country-ish ballad called “The Departed,” featuring Toronto musicians from
Mary Margaret O’Hara’s band that fades out with an acoustic take on the riff
from “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” Huh? (May 2)

Download: “Sex
and Money,” “DDs,” “Gun”

Kobo Town –
Jumbie in the Jukebox (Cumbancha)

“If I had
the choice, I would choose to live back when calypso brought the news,” sings
Trinidadian-Canadian singer/songwriter Drew Gonsalves. And while Kobo Town’s
music owes a large debt to traditional calypso—indeed, the name of the band
comes from the area in Port-of-Spain where the genre was born, and original
calypso star Lord Kitchener was a childhood neighbour of Gonsalves’. But he’s
not locked into set patterns: Jumbie in the Jukebox is a thoroughly modern
recording, owing debts to Western pop and Jamaican dancehall, all a delivery
method for songs that would be just as effective with just Gonsalves and his
acoustic guitar. He says he hoped this album, Kobo Town’s second and their
first in six years, would be “a contemporary expression that said something
about Caribbean music, our heritage, and the potential for a new voice that
resonates with people today.” Mission accomplished. And with an American record
deal and an international touring schedule, Gonsalves is ready to take his take
on Trinidad far beyond Toronto. (May 16)

Download: “Kaiso
Newscast,” “Half of the Houses,” “Postcard Poverty”

Majical
Cloudz – Impersonator (Matador)

If singer
Devon Welsh sounds dramatic, he comes across it honestly: his father is the
acclaimed Canadian stage actor Kenneth Welsh, best known for playing convicted
killer Colin Thatcher in a TV movie and as Agent Cooper’s arch-nemesis, Windom
Earle, in Twin Peaks. Among his many other gifts, Welsh the younger has great
diction and a commanding presence.

“I don’t
think about dying alone,” he sings—but not convincingly. Welsh croons with a
sombre seriousness that makes you think he’s contemplating mortal matters every
minute of every day. His music is based on lilting synth loops and little
else—no beats, minimal chord movement. Welch makes the most out of next to
nothing, and the result is meditative, hymnal and often sounds suspended in
time. Lots of people make minimal synth music; some people try to croon like a
young Scott Walker. Welsh is one of the only people doing both.

Majical
Cloudz, which Welsh formed with Matthew Otto, was formed in Montreal and sprung
from the same Arbutus Records scene that spawned Grimes, Blue Hawaii, Sean
Michael Savage and Doldrums: all fascinating acts, but hardly known for their
emotional directness. Welsh, in contrast, sounds like he’s standing on Mont Royal
facing Mile End, arms outstretched, eyes closed, calling to his peers to drop
their facades and search for spiritual truths. “If this song is the last thing
I do, I feel so good,” he sings.

His legacy
begins. (May 23)

Download: “I
Do Sing For You,” “Mister,” “This is Magic”

Major Lazer
– Free the Universe (Secretly Canadian)

This follows
up a 2009 tour-de-force dancehall pop explosion spearheaded by superstar DJ
Diplo and dozens of collaborators. Diplo’s production partner Switch has since
split, and the guest list has—unnecessarily—added some A-list gusts, like
Wyclef Jean, Bruno Mars, Shaggy, and Ezra Koenig from Vampire Weekend. What
once was a frenetic free-for-all now sounds more like what many feared the
debut would be: a big-shot American producer making watered-down, only mildly
interesting electronic take on Jamaican music, complete with moments of
Eurotrance cheese. Diplo made his name as M.I.A.’s right-hand man; he now
schlelps beats for Bieber. Major Lazer is certainly better than his current day
jobs, but considering his creativity in the past, this is a big
disappointment—mainly because none of the collaborators sound particularly
engaged, phoning it in over B-sides, while Diplo sounds like he’s trying too
hard to have fun on a cocaine bender. The rare moments of inspiration only make
the rest of the album that much more of a major bummer. (May 16)

What
would happen if U2 all bathed in valerian and insisted on making nothing but
dirgey ballads? The National may be the thinking man’s dad-rock band du jour,
but with each successive album it sounds like they’re trying to rewrite “One”
and “Love is Blindness.” They’ve come close before; they come close again here.
In the meantime, the lethargy is suffocating; the appeal, mystifying. (May 23)

Download:
“Graceless,” “I Should Live in Salt,” “I Need My Girl”

Saltland – I
Thought It Was Us But It Was All of Us (Constellation)

Rebecca Foon
is a Montreal cellist who has played with almost everyone in that
town—particularly those on the periphery of the scene that spawned Godspeed You
Black Emperor, notably Esmerine (with Godspeed percussionist Bruce Cawdron) and
Thee Silver Mt. Zion (with Godspeed guitarist Efrim Menuck). Here she performs
her own enchanting compositions on layered and looped cello, adding
percussionist Jamie Thompson (Unicorns, Islands) and her own languorous vocals.
The tone is not far removed from early ’90s 4AD acts (This Mortal Coil, Dead
Can Dance), with more drone elements and Thompson adding tasteful punctuation
that keeps all the weightless atmospherics from drifting off into the night
sky. (May 16)

Download: “Golden
Alley,” “Treehouse Schemes,” “Colour the Night Sky”

Savages –
Silence Yourself (Matador)

This no-boy
band from London are reminiscent of early ’80s British post-punk ala Joy
Division and Siouxie and the Banshees—perhaps the last period of rock music to
be couched in mystery and actual experimentation with form, owing no debts to
either blues or folk music, which endears it to the geekiest of the geeks and
black-clad record-store clerks around the world. (For more contemporary
Canadian references, this sounds like Katie Sketch of The Organ taking a shot
of adrenalin and fronting the D’Urbervilles.)

Which means
that because Savages is undeniably retro doesn’t mean they can’t sound fresh:
French-born singer Jehnny Beth is an astounding presence, the kind of
bone-chilling voice that leaps out of your stereo and stares you down and
haunts you, defying you to ignore her. She is also, other than the Yeah Yeah
Yeahs’ Karen O, the only current rock singer who can swoop from scowl to
screech and still be pitch-perfect; on top of that, she’s trained as a jazz
pianist, and Silence Yourself is surely the only punk rock record with a bass clarinet
solo.

This is not
a solo act, however. The rest of the band is just as exciting: guitarist Gemma
Thompson is full of jagged edges, chugging rhythms and experimental abandon,
and the rhythm section is solid and propulsive and raw. It’s all captured
expertly by producer Rodaidh McDonald, who treats them the same way he did The
XX: provide them with some good mics and a bit of reverb, stand back and watch
the magic happen, no overdubs necessary.

That said,
Silence Yourself is a good album by a great band; they weren’t together very
long before being thrust in the spotlight, and no doubt they have better
material in them. The trick will be keeping that initial spark. (May 9)

Download: “Shut
Up,” “I Am Here,” “She Will”

Colin
Stetson – New History of Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light (Constellation)

No
avant-garde saxophonist has had more of a public profile in the last—what,
three decades? Since John Zorn?—than Colin Stetson. The associate of Bon Iver
and Arcade Fire—who pulls off Olympian feats of physical strength while
circular breathing through a baritone saxophone and playing melody and
percussion at the same time—records with a lot of contact microphones and no
overdubs. Yes, it’s impressive. And yes, it often sounds like an elephant in
its death throes on an infinite loop—if you’re into that kind of thing. Which, it turns out, is more
people than one would think

His last
album catapulted him into headliner status and a slot on the Polaris Prize
shortlist. Can he get lucky twice, with an album that doesn’t stray too far
from Vol. 2’s limited palette? How much gurgling, pulsing saxophone can
audiences take? (Supplementary questions for the sake of argument: how many
arpeggiated symphonies can Philip Glass write? How many minimalist techno
records can Richie Hawtin make?)

No matter,
as Stetson is definitely improving: Vol. 3 expands his bag of tricks, proving
that he’s hardly a one-trick pony, and is more melodic than last time out—and
not just the tracks featuring Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon on vocals (including a
death metal turn on “Brute”), which are actually some of the weakest and
distracting here. And once again, the audio engineering—the art of capturing
this mysterious thing Stetson does—is what ultimately makes it translate so
well into a 40-minute record. Stetson’s music is an immersive experience, one
in which acoustic sounds become utterly alien and yet engrossing, one in which
the listener is constantly lurching through waves of insistent rhythm and
ghostly melodies. (May 2)

Idle No More
isn’t just a political movement. Thanks to this Ottawa DJ crew, it’s a musical
one, too. Though native hip-hop has had its own healthy scene for at least the
last 15 years, merging Aboriginal rhythms and voices to a pulsing techno beat hasn’t
been done as successfully, if at all—and it’s certainly never reached the kind
of audience that this DJ crew is doing. A Tribe Called Red has transformed
their popular Ottawa club gig into a national, nay international, phenomenon.

Part of the
appeal, of course, is hearing what may be one of the last “exotic” cultures to
be plundered in the name of globalized dance culture, but if that was the
beginning and end of this crew’s appeal, their story would be over by now.
Instead, their second album (or first, if you don’t count their free-download
debut recording, which was long-listed for the Polaris Prize) is brimming with
beats designed to excite and send crowds into a frenzy; the one track without
Aboriginal vocals, “Sweet Milk Pop,” is squiggly, sweaty and built for Berlin
or Brazil more than Brantford. But it is the vocals that make this more than
just another solid dance record (see: Daphni’s Jiaolong) and a vital cultural
document of a time and place in North American Aboriginal culture. They are
joyous, furious and inspired, full of the raw sound of community, trapped
inside synthetic machines and yet rising above them to find strength and power.
(May 9)

Vampire
Weekend open their third album with a downbeat, mid-tempo number: not a good
sign, especially for a band whose follow-up to a winning debut was bogged down
with soggy synths and AutoTune, which just sounded like awkward growing pains.

And so the
opening track here, “Obvious Bicycle,” doesn’t bode well, from the title on
down. But Vampire Weekend quickly pull a bait and switch: second track “Unbelievers”
is an upbeat, pulsing, pogo-friendly, three-chord sing-song melody that
transforms into an Irish anthem in the final of its three minutes. “I’m not
excited,” sings Ezra Koenig, “but should I be?”

Well, yes. “Diane
Young” owes a large debt to Elvis Presley, of all people—something surely lost
on 90 per cent of the band’s audience—as Koenig pitch-shifts his voice across
octaves, drummer Chris Tomson delivers machine-gun rolls and
multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij delivers a loopy solo that sounds like
Thurston Moore doing rockabilly; “Step” matches modern R&B influences with
psychedelic harpsichord, synth choirs and dreamy lead vocals; Koenig sounds
like a rambling auctioneer on the verses of the march of “Worship You,” before
writing a chorus worthy of Coldplay while a Persian female voice dances around
in the background. “Ya Hey” manages to borrow from roots reggae without ever
emulating it outright (unlike, say the pseudo-controversies over the South
African influences on Vampire Weekend’s debut), and even a yelping chorus of
what sounds like whining Smurfs can’t detract from a what is an album
highlight—the more ridiculous Vampire Weekend decide to be, the better the
track.

Modern
Vampires of the City isn’t consistent enough to live up to its best moments,
but when those moments come they point to a band whose creativity was always
greater than they were often given credit for. (May 16)

Download: “Ya
Hey,” “Step,” “Diane Young”

Rachel
Zeffira - The Deserters (Paper Bag)

Zeffira grew
up playing and singing classical music in small-town B.C., escaped to London
and then Verona and found herself playing music at the Vatican and forming a
band (Cat’s Eyes) with a member of a popular goth-rock British group (the
Horrors). Fans of Tori Amos and Lisa Germano should already be perking up, but
so should those of the debut albums by Julee Cruise and Goldfrapp: albums that
exist in some otherworldly, half-remembered European dream involving trains,
mountains and church spires. There’s a My Bloody Valentine cover (“To Here
Knows When”), a song that could be a classic Neil Young piano ballad from the
’70s (“Front Door”), and a lushly orchestrated disco song—recorded at Abbey
Road studios, and featuring harps—that could be Saint Etienne covering Donna
Summer. Zeffira’s piano playing, string arrangements and breathy soprano are
all enchanting; no wonder the world is paying attention. (May 2)